


At the Mirk and Midnight Hour

by acommontater



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Tam-lin inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 04:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/acommontater
Summary: There is a beach and on it stands a man.(Something is always a monster.)





	At the Mirk and Midnight Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColinFilth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColinFilth/gifts).



> Not my monkeys, not my circus, but I said "Tamlin mythos and PacRim hmm" to @colinfilth and then it ate my brain til I wrote something.

There is a man.

There is a man on a beach.

There is a man on a beach made of smooth white stones that slip under his feet as he walks.

There is a man on a beach made of white smooth stones that slip under his feet as he walks and he cannot recall how long he has been there, walking.

There is a man who has been on a beach for a long long time.

/

(There is-was a man who loves-loved him, before he was the man on the beach with the smooth white stones.

Why is he there? The man asks. I have been trying to find him again for so long, but all my calculations lead me back here again and again. And I am not where he is.)

/

There is a man on a beach with smooth white stones and he had-has a name.

It is still his, somewhere.

Just not for right now.

He can remember other names- the visitors who came by accident to him, to his beach.

He cannot remember other names- the man who loved-loves him, the monsters that once came from the deepness of the sea-space-time, his own.

/

(What did he do? The man-who-loves-loved-him asks.

Tried to take knowledge not meant for him to know.

The answer comes from a thousand ancient whispers that shake the bones to the marrow.

What did it cost him?

His stories, his knowledge in return.)

/

The man on the beach sometimes sits and watches the smooth roll of the sea-with-no-smell.

He feels something like an echo of an echo of fear when facing the waves, but doesn't know why.

He dreams in shades of blue and white.

/

(How can I save him? This is a curse, there are rules to a curse, curses can be solved like so many complex equations.

The ancient whisper-roar is silent for a moment.

You may prove yourself in one moons time.)

/

There is a man on a beach and his skin is as blank and smooth as the stones beneath his feet.

It is an unsettling kind of perfection,

A lacking in humanity.

He wonders if he has ever existed elsewhere, with a story in his skin,

Or if he has just always been smooth and sinking like a stone.

He dreams of a cane snapped in half and the wire rims of a set of glasses mangled almost beyond recognition.

/

(The sky is dark on the night a month later, as if you could vanish in the darkness and the stars would wait a million years to care.

The man who loves-loved the man on the beach stands square as he can, being made of all angles.

He turns left-left-left- _ right _ …)

/

(Smooth white stones slip under his feet as he looks out over a different shore.)

The man on the beach looks in puzzlement at the sudden appearance of another man against the white stones.

He doesn't know why he is here.

He does know that the other man should not be here.

Not tonight.

(Newt, he calls out in relief, good god what have they done to you?

But the man-on-the-beach-who-was-is-Newt only looks at him politely confused.

His heart drops like one of the stones on the beach.)

You shouldn't be here, he tells the man-who-names-him.

It's dangerous tonight.

I am dangerous tonight.

I know, the man tells him, that is why I am here.

/

(“Why is he there?” he asks.

 

The Fey laugh, a deep cold chuckle.

 

“He sought knowledge that was not his for the having. He is there until he learns his lesson.”

 

“There is a caveat right? Its a curse, those have rules to follow.”

He can almost feel the omnipresent collection of fey roll their eyes at him.

 

“He may leave us if he proves he can be loved by another.”)

 

///

 

((It is common knowledge that the Faye of our world hate iron.

It is actually all tainted, twisted metal elements that humans have bent to their will in a way that make them recoil in the unnaturalness of it.

They hate iron, it burns their cold skin.

They hates iron and steel and chrome and the naturalness of the captured electricity that can run through them.

They hate the machines that grind and spew fumes into the air, tainting it, sullying all they touch and-

They hate most of all the machines built to fight them.

The blue blood in their veins may poison and burn, but the machines that stand in the seas hurt back.

In retaliation, the Fey take a favored son of the machines.))

 

//

 

The sun sets on the beach with smooth white stones and the man-who-calls-him-Newt steps forward.

I would say I am sorry, but I swore not to lie, he tells him.

The moon vanishes and the man-who-loves-loved wraps his arms around the man-on-the-beach.

He holds on- in the darkness of the eclipse he cannot see anything, just feel.

(Newton turns to a writhing mass of tentacles

a mass of spines that take his breath with pain

a heavy metal full of angles

terribles beasts he cannot name that breath hot breath in his face and scratch and bite to be free.

His arms are tired, but they are steel.

A monster, a monster, a monster, a monster, each harder to grip in his arms.

But he has fought true monsters before.

To each of these he holds tight and whispers “I love you.”)

The man-who-is-no-longer-a-man on the beach screams in all his many mouths.

His body wrenches from shape to shape and the o lay things that stay are the arms around him and the gentle rock of a voice whispering their love into his many-changing ears.

 

//

 

[The moonlight breaks onto two men laying on a sandy beach.

One has had his stories returned, his skin once again brilliant in colors and memories.

The other collapses with exhaustion, a faint pleased look on his face.

They rest on a beach, and feel no fear.]


End file.
